[MPlayer-users] When will there be a new release?

[Attila Kinali]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:56:05 +0400
Andrew Savchenko <Bircoph at list.ru> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Tuesday 14 October 2008 12:45, Nicolas George wrote:
> > Le tridi 23 vendémiaire, an CCXVII, Andrew Savchenko a écrit :
> > >		       Well, perhaps -fontconfig should be enabled
> > > by default if supported.
> >
> > Some time ago, I would have totally agreed with you, but no
> > longer: there is something even better than -fontconfig: -ass.
> 
> I'm aware of -ass support, but there is some problems with them:
> 1) This is CPU-hungry rendering. I can feel this easly when 
> watching DVD's (without framedrops!) on my ancient laptop with 
> Pentium II-366 MHz on board.

Uhmm.. -ass has no effect when watching DVDs, as DVDs do not
have ASS subtitles. And a P-II 366 is at the lower limit for
watching DVDs even if it's a desktop (you need a good and fast
graphics card). Using a laptop which has a lot lower i/o bandwidth
is at least problematic. (Note for those who do not know: the
i/o bandwidth of PCs is at least as important as a fast CPU
if not even more important for watching videos)

> [...]
> > The result is that if I enable -ass, the subtitles are rendered
> > by libass, and look much nicer than the default ones.
> 
> Well, this depends on fonts used by your fontconfig. Furthermore I 
> use -spuaa 4 for scaling OSD, so I can't feel difference with 
> -ass, but this variant is faster.

Again, DVDs vobsub and ASS are mutaly exclusive. -spuaa doesnt
apply to -ass.

> > Furthermore, as I have a reasonably fast computer, I add
> > "-vf-add dsize=1920:1200:0,scale=0:0" to get software scaling
> > and have the subtitles rendered at the screen resolution.
> 
> Fontconfig's subtitles may be easily scaled using 
> -subfont-text-scale and -subfont-autoscale option. I can't see the 
> difference either.

The differnece is in the resolution you are rendering to.
Using -vf dsize forces MPlayer to rescale the picture first
before rendering the font, which results in much better resolution
for the fonts, at the expense of an horribly huge CPU and I/O bandwidth
consumption.

> Note: I'm not objecting against libass, I use it occasionally 
> myself, but fontconfig seems to me to be a preferred way to go.

Note: you are mixing up text subtitles with non-text subtitles.

			Attila Kinali

-- 
If you want to walk fast, walk alone.
If you want to walk far, walk together.
		-- African proverb